For the third straight day, inmates were denied visits, programs and yard exercise, sources said.

As first reported in the Free Press, the lockdowns at the Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre (EMDC) have followed a dispute between the guards’ union and the province over a new work schedule.

That new schedule includes daily eight-hour shifts instead of compressed work weeks with 12-hour shifts, and provides no guarantees of filling vacant positions when correctional officers are on vacation or call in sick, the union says.

That’s left EMDC short-staffed, the union says, with officers worried about their own and inmates’ safety, and unwilling to unlock ranges.

“Things are progressively getting worse,” one officer said Wednesday.

The province says it has signed work week agreements with guards at Ontario’s 28 other correctional facilities without problem.

But EMDC officers counter it’s been hit hardest by staff cuts over the past two years, and they need flexible work weeks and a guarantee that vacant jobs will be filled.

Frequent flashpoints at EMDC — lawsuits, complaints, inquests, even a murder — have kept it under a spotlight over the past two years.